


small talk

by everytuesday



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Coming Out, Gay Archie Andrews, M/M, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 11:49:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18940321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everytuesday/pseuds/everytuesday
Summary: late night confessions in a boxing gym





	small talk

The best way Maddox can describe Archie Andrews is that he’s weird, because he’s not sure what else could come close to accurate. You can smell the suburbia on him a mile away and he’s got that clean-cut, hopeful glimmer in his eye when he talks about the future or expresses disbelief at some new, dark happening in Riverdale. The glimmer started to dim the second he stepped into Leopold and Loeb, but it’s still there. Now that they’re both out, Maddox thinks it might be getting a little brighter again, though never the same that it once was.

Archie is also weird, just beyond that, in a dumbass with a heart of gold way. A way that is unfortunately very much Maddox’s type, which leads to him doing stupid things like repeatedly sticking his neck out for him.

Well, not _stupid_. He’d do most of what he does for Archie for a lot of people. There’s just these weird undercurrents of mushy feelings attached whenever he does things for Archie. He feels stupid a lot around Archie, especially when Archie looks at him a certain way, like the way he’s looking at him now, as they’re cooling off after a sparring match. He’s so damn _genuine_ about everything.

That genuinity is there in his curious tone when he asks, “Is Mad Dog actually your real name? If it, it's cool, I just... wondered.”

Maddox anticipated this conversation happening eventually, but even so, it catches him off-guard that it came up so soon. “It’s Maddox. That’s what I told everyone when I first got to L&L but they heard Mad Dog instead and it stuck. There’s a whole reputation around it now, so don’t go telling everyone.”

Not that he thinks Archie would, but his name became an intensely personal thing a nd he hopes Archie gets that it means something to tell him.

 _“_ Wouldn’t dream of it,” Archie says. “But do you have a nickname or something? Seriously, calling you Mad Dog all the time feels weird.”

“My little brother calls me Mads.”

"Mads is good,” Archie grins. “Can I use it?”

“I’d like that.”

Archie proceeds to never call him Mad Dog again, which is stupidly endearing. He peeks over Archie’s shoulder one time and learns that Archie even went so far as to change his name in his phone. He also added a little smiley emoji next to it, and that just about breaks him.

But Archie might as well be the posterboy for heterosexuality, so it seems useless to get all flustered about it. He cares about Archie, Archie cares about him, and they look out for each other. That’s enough. He can handle his shit and he’ll get over the mushy feelings eventually.

A few weeks later, Maddox wins an especially difficult tournament and Archie promises to celebrate with him, just the two of them. They hole up in the El Royle with two packs of beer and sit on the edge of the ring, legs dangling over the side. They drink their first beers and talk about matches and plans for the gym, about putting together a youth championship and getting Riverdale High students to participate. Then they’re on their second beer and talking about school, which Mads doesn’t want to go back to and which Archie is struggling against dropping.

“My parents would kill me if I quit,” Archie hunches his shoulders and frowns into his beer. “Mom’s barely wrapping her head around the idea that I’m not going to college; if I became a high school drop out, she’d lose her mind.”

“I feel that; my gran’s still pissed at me for dropping out, but that ship has sailed,” Mads says. He’s not hung-up over it, really. He’s got the gym and it’s not like Riverdale wouldn’t hire high school drop-outs. It’s not the kind of town you need a degree for, high school or otherwise.

“What about getting your GED?” Archie asks. “You’re still 17, it’s not like it’s too late. You could get your diploma, even. And if you went to Riverdale High, you’d already have some friends.”

Maddox almost laughs at the suggestion, “I'd have _your_ friends. And they're weird, Red, no offense. Your girlfriend’s dad--”

“Ex-girlfriend,” Archie interjects with a strange amount of intensity.

“Your ex’s dad is a mob boss who tried to kill you, your other friend’s dad is a serial killer, and your other-other friend runs a gang.”

“And Kevin’s being deprogrammed from a cult,” Archie adds. “And we’re two ex-cons who were put into a teen fighting ring.”

“You’re not a _ex-con_ ,” Maddox rolls his eyes. This is the second or third time he's heard Archie say it and every time he has to fight to keep himself from laughing, “Your charges were dropped.”

“Yeah, but--”

“Ex con sounds hotter?” he teases, implications lost on him until he’s said it out loud and _whoops._

“Shut up,” Archie sets aside his beer and slugs him in the arm. “All I’m saying is, we’re not exactly normal either.”

Maddox grins back at him, mocking, and Archie hits his arm again. Mads slugs him harder and Archie makes a dramatic show of falling backward.

“Dumbass,” Mads says affectionately before tackling him.

And then they’re scuffling around the boxing ring, throwing half-assed punches at each other and Archie’s _giggling_ , this dumb, high-pitched squeak, which just makes Mads laugh harder. Archie ends up pinning him, his weight resting on top of Mads’ stomach as he looks down at him triumphantly, breathless with his laughter caught in his throat. Something comes across his eyes and he looks panicked, then scrambles off Mads and lands on his ass in the ring, forcing laughter.

There’s that trademarked Archie Andrews weirdness. “Red?”

Archie clears his throat, glancing over at Mads, “Seriously. Come back to school with me in the fall. It’d be way less crappy with you there.”

“I’ll think about it,” he says, and means it.

“Good.”

Archie scoots back over to the edge of the ring again and Mads joins him, their shoulders brushing a little. Archie picks up his half-empty beer and chugs the rest of it, making a face. Archie never liked the taste of beer and told Mads as much when they were buying it (“Get something else,” Mads suggested, and Archie shook his head and bought it anyway). Mads pulls out another one from the pack, pops the cap, and hands it to him.

“Okay, new topic,” Archie suggests, puzzling for a moment, then quickly tacks on, “What’s the most messed up way you won a fight at L&L?”

“You first,” Mads says, because the fight that immediately comes to mind is not what he's very interested in sharing.

Archie’s brow furrows as he thinks, then he claps his hands together, “Oh, oh, I got it! So. I was up against this Ghoulie, right? Three times my size, easily; I swear he had to be in his twenties, but whatever. He broke my nose and I was bleeding everywhere, totally gonna lose the fight. There was, like, this huge pool of my blood on the ground and he slipped in it and I guess he fell hard enough that he knocked himself out. And I won the fight.”

Archie looks proud of himself over it too and Mads wants to throw his beer at him. “I was hoping you were going to say something about hitting a guy in the nuts, but of course not. Not from the boy who wouldn’t shiv a Ghoulie to save his life.”

“You didn’t join up with a gang either,” Archie points out, defensive. “Did you never think about it? It could’ve made things easier.”

“My gran would’ve killed me,” he shakes his head. “Plus, they’re a bunch of assholes. Serpents and Ghoulies.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Archie says, which surprises him.

“Isn’t your best friend--?”

“I stand by it,” Archie says and Mads laughs. “Toni’s cool, I guess; she seems to keep Cheryl grounded. But Jughead changed a lot after he joined the Serpents. Sweet Pea and Fangs have always been assholes. And Joaquin kissed me and stabbed me, which- talk about mixed signals.”

 _Wait, what?_ Mads jerks his head to look full-on at Archie and can’t tell if this is meant to be a coming out or if Archie assumed he already-- No, Archie’s looking at his shoes and biting his lip, face bright red, so clearly he didn’t mean for it to slip out this way.

“I never liked Joaquin,” Mads says just to break the silence, but it’s true. “Wouldn’t think he’d be your type.” Also true, on several levels. _Archie and Joaquin?_ He can’t picture it, like at all.

“Yeah, me either," he says, which just furthers the confusion.

“Wait, was it not a mutual thing?”

“He sort of," Archie frowns. "Grabbed me and kissed me.”

“Cool, so I hate him more now.”

“I don’t think he was in his right mind. He started talking goblins and ascension crap right after. I think it was supposed to be an apology kiss.” Leave it to Archie to try defending someone who had literally stabbed him.

Mads had mostly disliked Joaquin on account of the whole Serpent thing, but when he’d first learned about the stabbing after getting out of L&L, it deepened his negative impression of the boy. And this additional information just makes the whole thing worse and Mads can’t quite sort through it; it's complicated with Joaquin's death. But he's still pissed and he allows himself to feel that much.

Archie is talking again, but his voice sounds distant and he’s staring straight ahead, deep in thought, “There was a second, less than second, honestly, where I was okay with it. The kiss. Like if it hadn’t been so out of the blue, and we’d been somewhere else, maybe I would’ve-- I don’t know. But then he stabbed me and things happened so fast. And I’ve never told anyone about it because it doesn’t make sense for me to think it was okay unless...”

Archie presses his lips together and looks genuinely upset, searching for the words, and he’s not going to get there on his own, so Mads finishes for him, “Unless maybe you like guys?”

Relief spreads across Archie’s face and he swallows and nods emphatically. “ _Yeah._ ”

He’s-- Okay. This is it, they’re here now. “So, you’re gay. Or bi, maybe? It’s not like you haven’t kissed girls too.”

Archie shrugs and his noncommittal speaks volumes.

“Do you _like_ kissing girls?”

“I mean, I’ve done it a lot,” Archie says quickly and yeah, Mads has kissed a few girls too in his time, but that doesn’t mean--

“But do you like it?” he presses. _Come on, Archie, you can get there._

“I don’t know,” Archie admits. “I feel something, but I don’t know that whatever I feel is how I’m supposed to feel. It’s nice, I guess. But it’s not…”

He gestures helplessly in front of him and doesn't say  _It’s not kissing a boy_ because of course this would be impossible for Archie to figure out. It’s not like there’s a plethora of openly gay boys in Riverdale for him to experiment with until he knows for sure. There’s like... two.

Well, sort of. Archie’s mentioned Kevin a few times before, so there’s him.

Maddox isn’t exactly out, but he’s not exactly _in_ , either. His family knows. A couple of the other boys in L&L knew. He assumed Archie knew, but maybe he didn’t? This doesn’t come across as asking for advice; the whole thing seems too accidental and Archie’s wound so tight talking about it.

Mads bumps shoulders with him, turning to study the frown in Archie's brow, the way his lips press together.  _Am I doing this? Yeah, okay, I'm doing this._ “Sounds like you might have to kiss another boy to figure it out.”

“Yeah,” Archie sighs. “Yeah, you’re right. I just don’t know who.”

 _I’m right here, dumbass._ Mads wants to kiss him then, but he remembers the circumstances of Archie’s last kiss with a boy and decides against the impulse.

“What about me?” he asks instead. Archie’s head snaps up and he stares, jaw hanging open, like he doesn’t quite understand what was just said. So Mads clarifies, “Can I kiss you?”

Archie blinks. “You--?”

Mads nods, “Also, uh, the longer we sit around, the more awkward it’s gonna get if you turn me down. So?”

“Okay!” Archie’s lips quirk up at the corners like he’s about to smile. “Yeah, kiss me.”

Mads slides his hand onto Archie’s cheek and leans in, slow and cautious, in case Archie changes his mind or wants to say something or--

Archie swoops in the rest of the way, pressing his lips against Mads’ and Mads _swears_ he can hear Archie’s heartbeat; his nervous energy is pouring off him in waves, but Archie leans into it. Mads brushes his thumb over Archie’s cheek, which seems to relax him and the other boy leans more and starts to part his lips. Mads can’t stop himself from smiling, which sort of ruins the kiss and he draws back, watching Archie, still slow and cautious.

“So…?”

“That was… Yeah,” Archie grins, eyes alight, “Yes. _That_.”

Mads leans back, beaming

“What about-- you?” The light disappears from Archie’s eyes and he looks down again, almost… guilty?

Mads nudges him and Archie turn his head, hesitant, and the second he’s at the right angle Mads kisses him again. Archie relaxes into it immediately this time, hands coming up to cup Mads’ face and draw him closer.

When they stop this time, Mads presses his forehead against Archie’s and smiles, “That answer your question?”

“I think so,” Archie murmurs.

They stay sitting on the edge of the ring for awhile, struggling to drift back into coherent conversation and leaning into each other until they’re hip-to-hip.

It’s getting close to midnight now and they’ll have to leave before too long. They have people who will worry if they stay out all night and then they’ll have to get back to figuring out school and family and the rest of their lives, but for now… For now Mads lets himself take comfort in the quiet of the empty gym and the boy resting his head against his shoulder.

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact: maddox is from a welsh surname that means son of madoc, which is sometimes spelled madog
> 
> thanks to ShyAudacity for betaing!!


End file.
